The Night Manager

The recruitment of Jonathan Pine, former undercover soldier, by Leonard Burr, former intelligence officer, was conceived by Burr immediately after Jonathan presented himself to Wing Commander Quayle but only accomplished after tense weeks of Whitehall infighting, despite the mounting clamour from Washington and Whitehall's perpetual urge to earn merit in the fickle corridors of Capitol Hill.

The title of Jonathan's part of the project was first Trojan, then hastily changed to Limpet ― the reason being that while some members of the joint team might not know much about Homer's wooden horse, they all knew that Trojan was the brand name of one of America's most popular condoms. But Limpet was fine. A limpet attaches itself through thick and thin.

Jonathan was a godsend, and nobody knew this better than Burr, who from the moment the first reports from Miami started landing on his desk had been beating his brains for some way, any way, into the Roper camp. But how? Even Burr's mandate to operate hung by a thread, as he discovered when he took his first soundings about the feasibility of his plan.

"My master is a bit chary, frankly, Leonard," a mandarin called Goodhew confided skittishly to Burr over the secure telephone. "Yesterday it was all about the cost, today he's not keen on aggravating an uneasy situation in a former colony."

The Sunday papers had once described Rex Goodhew as Whitehall's Talleyrand without the limp. But as usual they had it wrong, for Goodhew was nothing that he seemed. If there was a separateness about him, it came of virtue, not intrigue.

His mangy smile, flat cap and bicycle concealed nothing more sinister than a high-minded Anglican of reforming zeal. And if you were ever lucky enough to penetrate his private life, you found, instead of mystery, a pretty wife and clever children who adored him.

"Uneasy, my Aunt Fanny, Rex!" Burr exploded. "The Bahamas is the easiest country in the hemisphere. There's hardly a bigwig in Nassau isn't up to his ears in cocaine. There's more bent politicians and shady arms dealers on that one island ― "

"Steady down, Leonard," Rooke warned him. from across the room. Rob Rooke was Burr's restraining hand, a retired soldier of fifty with grizzled hair and a rugged, weather-beaten jaw. But Burr was in no mood to heed him.

"As to the rest of your premise, Leonard," Goodhew resumed, undaunted, "which personally I thought you presented with tremendous brio, even if you were a trifle long on adjectives, my master called that 'reading tea leaves with a dash of special pleading for good measure.' "

Goodhew was referring to his minister, a silky politician not yet turned forty.

"Tea leaves?" Burr echoed in furious bewilderment. "What's he bleating about tea leaves for? That's a five-star, chapter-and-verse, verifiable report from a highly placed informant of American Enforcement. It's a miracle Strelski ever showed it to us! What's tea leaves about that?"

Once more Goodhew waited for Burr to finish his tirade.

"Now for the next question ― my master's again, Leonard, not mine, so don't shoot the messenger! When do you propose to advise our friends across the river?"

He was referring this time to Burr's former service and present rival, which traded in Pure Intelligence from a grim tower block on the South Bank.

"Never," Burr retorted belligerently.

"Well, I think you should."

"Why?"

"My master regards your old colleagues as realists. Far too easy, in a small, very new and, dare he say it, idealistic new agency such as yours, not to see beyond one's fence. He'd feel more comfortable if you had the River boys aboard."

The last of Burr's self-restraint gave way. "You mean your master would like to see someone else bludgeoned to death in a Cairo flat, is that it?"

Rooke had risen to his feet and was standing like a traffic policeman, his right hand raised for "halt." On the telephone, Goodhew's flippancy gave way to something harder.

"What are you suggesting, Leonard? Perhaps you'd better not explain."

"I'm suggesting nothing. I'm telling you. I've worked with your master's realists, Rex. I've lived with them. Lied with them. I know them. I know Geoffrey Darker. And I know his Procurement Studies Group. I know their houses in Marbella, and their second Porsches in the garage, and their unstinted devotion to the free market economy, provided it's their freedom and somebody else's economy. Because I've been there!"

"Leonard, I will not hear you, and you know I won't."

"And I know there's more crockery in that shop, more bad promises to keep, more lunching with the enemy, and gamekeepers turned poachers, than is healthy for my operation, or my agency!"

"Just stop," Rooke advised quietly.

As Burr slammed down the telephone, a sash window slipped its ancient fastening and toppled like a guillotine. Patiently, Rooke folded a used brown envelope, raised the sash and wedged it in place.